"it was the dream of any photographer, with or without clothes": that was the last (and almost destroyed) photo shoot by Marilyn Monroe

“Well, Marilyn.You are very famous and now you are going to make me famous, ”said Lawrence Schiller on the first day that came to the filming of Something's Got To Give (something like 'Someone has to give up'), in May 1962. That joke resorted toBeing premonitory and also macabra: that movie would never end.Two months later, Marilyn died in her house in Brentwood (California) in strange circumstances.From that moment, Schiller's portraits were destined to go down in history.

Schiller, que con el tiempo se convirtió en escritor y director de cine (se hizo con un Oscar en 1975 por su documental The Man Who Skied Down Everest) contó lo vivido durante esos días junto a Marilyn en un libro publicado en 2012 y que ahora reedita Taschen, Marilyn & Me. Un mito, el de la Marilyn, que este 2021 no hará más que renacer: próximamente se estrenará en Netflix la película Blonde, basada en la novela de Joyce Carol Oates del mismo título y que se adentra en la vida de la actriz californiana con Ana de Armas como protagonista.

It is very easy to replace a photographer

"Don't be so arrogant," Marilyn replied to Schiller's joke."It is very easy to replace a photographer."A phrase, also in a humorous key, which immediately erased the smile from the photographer's face.In mid -1962 Lawrence was far from being a known photographer.He was 25 years old and had just opened a study in Los Angeles.He dedicated himself mainly to advertising photography, but occasionally the editors of some of the most relevant magazines assigned important orders such as following Nixon during the 1960 electoral campaign - which he ended up losing in front of J.F.Kennedy–, or portray the attendees of Clark Gable funeral for Paris Match.

They also used to send it to photograph filming.During the decades of the fifties and sixties, the enlightened magazines were one of the most important media for cinematographic studies: that a magazine like Time, Life, Look or The Sunday Times included reports on their next premiere, it was a greatHelp when promoting it on a global scale.It was in one of these works, photographing for look the filming of the billionaire (1960) where Schiller had met Monroe.Putting into practice a sympathy that he recognizes that he has helped him a lot throughout his career, Schiller had fallen in grace to the star.

In the three days that had happened with her in 1960 she ended up discovering that the actress had a personality that was far from what she showed on the screen.He met an intelligent, cultured woman, who perfectly controlled her image and that constantly gave her ideas for her snapshots.“She knew better than anyone what worked better on camera.As an actress she was enormously insecure, but as a model she was not at all, ”says Schiller himself in the book.

Marilyn's life had complicated a lot during the two years that had passed between those two films.She professionally did not go well: the billionaire was a commercial failure despite including songs as emblematic as My Heart Belongs to Daddy;And she also also managed to star in breakfast with diamonds despite the fact that Truman Capote did everything possible to be hired.The filming in 1961 of rebel lives was hell: the actress suffered from calculations in the kidney, eye problems and a severe addiction to sleeping pills.To top it off, after the filming, another of the stars of the film, Clark Gable, died and Monroe was blamed for the media of his death due to the long hours of waiting to those that submitted the team under the hard sun of the Nevada Desert.

The worst, however, was in his personal life.After four years of marriage, she divorced Arthur Miller just at the end of rebel lives, whose script he had signed.And then she had a short romance with Frank Sinatra that aggravated her more if her emotional problems fits.She touched back when she was admitted against her will for three days in a padded cell of a New York psychiatric hospital, where she took her ex -husband Joe Dimaggio.

But despite all this storm of problems, in 1962, the 20th Century Fox required its services: it would have to lose ten kilos to star in Something’s Got To Give.And she had no choice: she was bound by contract.

That pool scene

Schiller spent several days photographing the actress in her dressing room or preparing scenes with the rest of the cast, which included Dean Martin and Wally Cox, but since she had read the script of the film she knew that the best photos would arrive when the scene was shotin which Marilyn swam in a pool under Martin's watchful eye.That was the key moment, the one that would bring the covers that the study, Monroe and the photographer himself.Each, for different reasons.

In the filming plan it was clear that Marilyn would appear naked, but no one imagined that the actress was really naked.When she, after a long wait, she appeared for filming, she wore a blue bathrobe and under her a bikini of her skin color.She threw the pool and Schiller began firing with two cameras, one in color and one in black and white.

As Marilyn splaced in the pool, the photographer realized that the top of her bikini and then the rest disappeared.Among the shots, the actress posed, she was having a great time."Marilyn was the dream of any photographer with her clothes and much more without her," says Schiller.“Her wet skin shone, her eyes was radiant.She lacked a week to turn 36 and she was better than ever.She was incredibly safe in front of the camera and her confidence was contagious.At that time, there was no trace of that woman who had gone through so many difficulties throughout her life. ”

When the session ended after a couple of hours, Schiller knew that the material he had was top quality.Sixteen rolls of 36 black and white exhibitions and three in color.And although there was still Monroe to review and approve the images, he knew that he was not going to be very strict, since he needed advertising.The competition in Hollywood was brutal at that time: while Marilyn was rolling Something’s Got To Give, Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke starring Ana Sullivan's miracle;Bette Davis and Joan Crawford were with what was Baby Jane?;Katharine Hepburn performed long day towards Eugene O'Neill night;Geraldine Page and Paul Newman sweet youth bird;Lee Remick and Jack Lemmon were going to start with days of wine and Rosas and Gregory Peck embodied lawyer Atticus Finch in killing a nightingale.

Marilyn gave his authorization for more than fifty snapshots to be published.The rest were destroyed by Schiller the next day, oblivious to the historical and commercial value that the images had acquired only a few months later."She lived in the present and not in the future," he says in the book.The actress put another condition: that none of the magazines publishing them talked about Elizabeth Taylor in that number.

While Schiller was busy in the negotiations with the magazines interested in the photos, the filming of the film moved forward, but the production environment had raised until reaching an almost unbearable level.The study managers were angry at the continuous delays that Marilyn's behavior had caused in the film.She was late, she left the set to attend personal commitments (such as going to sing the happy birthday to President Kennedy) or she said she was sick.So Fox, after it calculates that the behavior of the actress had cost her more than half a million dollars, and check how little she had shot, decided to fire her, sue her for damages and losses and put an end to the project.

Although there was no film to promote, the editors did not cost to find a new approach to the photos and the Life magazine was the first to take a cover one of Marilyn's images next to the pool on July 16, 1962. AThis publication would follow many more throughout the world, which made Schiller a famous photographer and provided him with enough money to give the entrance of a house."I'm going to hang a sign at the door that says:‘ The house that Marilyn bought, "Schiller joked with the actress in those days.She told her that she made her very happy to have helped him to get it.

Marilyn was also very satisfied with all the advertising that the photos were generating.Schiller took her every few days more national and foreign magazines with her image on her cover, which she had scattered by her hall.

The last time he visited her at home, she found the actress taking care of the garden flowers, with loose hair, without makeup and with a simple white dress.The photographer noticed her a little more abrupt than he had given the magazines, another set of photos of her for her approval that she was destined to leave her in Playboy and told her that she was going on vacation for a few days toPalm Springs.They stayed to talk about her and said goodbye as always.

August 5, 1962

On the second day of being on the beach, a call woke Schiller before 7 in the morning.They had found Monroe dead in her bedroom.Everything pointed out that the cause of her death had been an overdose of barbiturates, the pills she used to fall asleep.In the press there was talk of suicide, but in the last encounter of her Marilyn had not seemed a person who wanted to die."On the other hand, what does a suicide look like?" Asks the photographer in the book.

The shock was total.Schiller went to the star's house with his camera and nobody asked for any accreditation;Both Life and Paris Match had assigned him to cover the events of Marilyn's death and her burial, which ended up organizing her ex -husband, Joe Dimaggio.Although marriage between the two had been a disaster - especially for his jealousy.Somehow the former baseball player was still responsible for the actress.

At the funeral he missed many of the people who had marked the life of the star."His colleagues with skirts and crazy, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis were not there," says Schiller.“Directors George Cukor, John Huston, Billy Wilder and Elia Kazan were not there.Her first husband Jim Dougherty, and her third husband, Arthur Miller, either.Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford, Dean Martin and Wally Cox, either.The Kennedy brothers either.It was commented that Dimaggio had ensured that those who thought they had destroyed the life of the actress were not invited to present her respect. ”

Lee Strasberg, who had been a professor of Monroe at actor's Studio, was in charge of pronouncing a few words at the funeral that perhaps are the most sensitive and, at the same time, the most accurate when decoding a character as complex asIt was the Californian actress.He referred to her as "a legend" and described her as a "warm, impulsive, shy and lonely human being.Sensitive and very afraid to feel rejected. ”He spoke of the hope he had in the future that would never come and also of "her light, a combination of melancholy, brightness and desire, that he separated her from the world and at the same time made everyone feel attracted to her."

Over the years, Marilyn's myth became more and bigger.According to Schiller, Monroe is much more famous today than she had never been at her time.And, in part, the photos of that day have definitely contributed to it, because they show the person who spoke Strasberg in his parliament at his funeral.An exceptional woman but also locked up an unfathomable mystery.She who embodied that contradictory mixture of sadness and loneliness in the middle of a cloud of flatterers.Schiller's chronicle, on the other hand, complements that vision and recreates before us a real, living and extraordinary woman whose life ended in a sharp and unexpected way.

"Marilyn is still a living and extraordinary presence in my life," concludes Schiller, who is today 84 and lives in New York, in the last paragraph of the book."I still think about her."

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